Tonight, after a wonderful evening spent at the house dining and coversing with my friends -- a young married couple with their two lovely kids -- I wandered downstairs to do what I've grown accustomed to doing on a Wednesday evening: turning on the TV to watch The West Wing and Law and Order. I usually pay close attention to the former but have the latter act as background noise while I answer email or surf the Web.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately -- the reception tonight was so terrible that Channel 11 was just a noisy mess. I turned off the TV, cursed the cabling in the house, and found my way to my computer in the quiet of my room. Ah -- this is so much more conducive to concentration, peace, and productive reflection.

So why void does the TV fill -- or seems to fill -- that gets me to turn it on in the first place?

From an article in today's SF Chronicle about the latest slew of partisan political books from the right and the left:

"These books capitalize on polarization," says Susan Rasky, senior lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "They play to an audience that's pissed off at the other. These are not books that ask, 'How do we bring ourselves together?' "

Anyone writing books to answer that last question?

I'm in the middle of a new craze -- one for the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. The Pacific Film Archives is hosting a retrospective of Ozu's work right now. In the two weeks, I've seen three of his films but am aching to see more of the 36 that are being shown at the PFA.

Since I've not been blogging regularly, I want to return to blogging by writing as pointedly as I can. But it's late alas -- so right now, I just want to leave a tidbit to seed what I plan to write tomorrow and to whet the appetite of the several loyal readers I have out there.

I've been thinking about the issue of universality and the art of Ozu. I throw in Bach -- well, because I like Bach -- but also because I've pondered the use of the adjective to describe Bach. Are all these things related? I don't know.

Let me just sign off for the evening by throwing in a quote for me to sleep on:

Hasegawa also offers his view as to why Ozu's films are still loved by so many people: "Ozu consistently portrayed the universal theme of family issues common to all human beings. Wim Wenders hit the nail on the head about Ozu's films in stating: 'As thoroughly Japanese as they are, these films are, at the same time, universal. In them, I've been able to recognize all families, in all the countries of the world, as well as my parents, my brother, and myself.' However many times I watch Ozu's movies, after viewing, the films inspire me to contemplate the meaning of life, families, and parent-child relationships." Hasegawa's desire is to "introduce even one more person to Ozu's films, particularly the next generation of youth." That is undoubtedly also the hope of every person who loves Ozu and his work.

Thanksgiving is upon us. I find it challenging to actually slow down and soak in the meaning of an given holiday. It's not for a lack of trying. On some Veterans Day, I stop to reflect on soldiers of war and pray for peace. Yet it's not easy in the U.S. to really commemorate an occasion. Most around me just see these days as another day off. The newspaper is typically full of advertising for the special shopping to be had.

So with Thanksgiving, I am faced with another great chance to give thanks. I will try to give thanks and not just run around making my dish or just sit around stuffing my face. Let's see whether I succeed.

Let me offer up a list of books that are on my mind lately as a substitute
for some "real blogging":

• The
  Middle Mind : Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves (whose author Curtis
  White spoke at Cody's Books tonight)
• The
  Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why
• Book
  of My Nights: Poems
• The
  5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers : The Guide for Achieving Success and
  Satisfaction
• Churches
  That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community With Good News and Good Works
• Chinese
  Americans and Their Immigrant Parents: Conflict, Identity, and Values

This morning, I attended church and sat beside Lloyd and Pepe. I wrote an entire page of reflection based on the sermon and may go into those reflections in this space -- but not tonight when I'm tired. I will say that the sermon series on 1 Peter was immensely challenging for me.

Last night, when feeling a bit down, I turned to doing a bit of programming. That actually lifted my spirits, though I need to fight against programmers' obsession.

Riding my bike is another good way for me to fight the blues. What a lovely autumn afternoon in which to cruise around Berkeley.

As I type this entry, I'm listening to Rough Guide to the Music of China. Such a nice way to get introduced to some big artists who had previously been utter strangers to me. I await the selection of Cantonese opera that will surely transport me back to my childhood.

It is time to go to bed, lest I get a second wind and not be able to fall asleep until 1am!

Something I wrote in my
blog almost two years ago:

I am also painfully aware that I have live in a narrow band of my life because
I have seemingly forgotten most of what I have ever known or experienced.
I say "seemingly" because on occasions, sometimes in ephiphanic
moments, I have glimpses into my past -- memories of snow crunching underneath
my boots in cold, cold Timmins, of gym classes I hated, of classmates who
have gone to places I know not where. I am an iceberg and only the surface
is apparent to others and to myself.

I regularly return to the metaphor of self as iceberg. In several months, I
turn 37. I often anticipate the future and obviously have no choice but to live
my life moment by moment in the present. As I lose more and more of life to
the past, I become increasingly zealous about accessing my memories. Writing,
I suspect, will be a primary tool in my remembering process.

Let me brainstorm some memories, true or false, and see what this process jogs
in me.

At about 10 pm, as I was returning home in a taxi from Kidd Creek Mines,
after working really late, I looked up and saw colourful splotches of light
in the sky. Things didn't seem right at first. What was that stuff? I then
realized that it was the first time that I ever saw the northern lights (aurora
borealis). I'm surprised that living in Timmins that the aurora borealis isn't
more common. I've not seen it since.

At the end of grade 8, a girl I had a mad crush on was moving to Texas. I
wrote a card and bought her a present and walked several miles through the
"suburbs" of Timmins to say goodbye. On occasion, years later, I'd
wonder what had ever happened to her. I even did a few google searches, though
I never paid for a PI to track her down. But I never found out where she is
now.

When my younger sister, who was 8 years younger than I, was born -- my other
sister and I ran home to see her on her first day out of the hospital. I remember
her lying in her crib. How I wish to remember more about that day.

There was a summer in which 3-d glasses were all the rage. I went out to
buy one of those cheap pairs (with the paper frames and flimsy filters), eagerly
waiting some flick about a gorilla in a zoo. The show was so disappointing.
Not only was the story line lame but the 3d efforts were terrible. Why did
we get so excited?

These days, I like walking by the elementary school in our neighborhood,
peeking in the windows. I like to say proudly that I don't care about my own
surroundings since I'm a man who lives inside my head -- but what is it about
the brightly lit, extremely colorful, rich immersive environment about the
K-6 classroom that calls out to me? I daydream about Queen Elizabeth Public
School, where I attended K-6. There were two floors -- and I'll have to come
back to all the images that are surfacing for me even as I try to transport
myself there: gyms on the north and southside, a big (oak?) tree on one corner
of the yard, cleaning the chalk erasers one afternoon, school buses parked
in a row, walking towards home and then turning back to see the school (now
why did I turn around?), the things I did during recess by myself for many
years, where the principal's office was, distributing valentine's day cards.

The mundane has taken on a magical tinge.

Rebecca Mead's Love for Sale in The New Yorker is a review of a book that advises women to apply the notion of personal branding in their search for a mate. Mead mentions The Brand Called You, the famous essay by Tom Peters that apparently kicked off this whole think-of-yourself-as-a-brand craze.

Let's see how I've branded myself: The Bach Nut; The Geek Scholar; The Quiet And Responsible Friend; The Deep Thinking But Fun Guy; The Bible Loving But Not Bible Thumping Very Reasonable Christian. The Bad Blog Poet on Late Nights.

I think that I'm going to need a better marketing guru to help me play this game of self-branding....

My friend Krista and I saw Alice Sebold from the second row of Zellerbach Hall tonight. What a treat! There's a lot I'd like to recount -- but since I'm dog tired and it's late, I'll make one observation here in the hope that I'll be able to say more later:

Alice Sebold extolled the excellencies of poetry in her own writing process. Though she is a prose writer, she draws inspiration, energy, and new vision from meditating on poetry. Sebold read several poems during the course of the evening. When asked whether she herself writes poetry, she replied that although she writes some decent poems, she is not currently attempting to getting any of them published.

How does my writing relate to my life? Sometimes when I sit here before my blog, I struggle to find something useful to write about. Other times, I'm overwhelmed by the overabundance of topics. Tonight is an example of the latter case. If I just drew from a running list of stuff I maintain on my wiki, I could write about anything from Studs Terkel to a Taiwanese dance company -- with Bach thrown in. Too many things have been happening to me for me to get all of my life down on paper. Maybe I should shrink my lived experience down to what I can write about. In that case, I would stop reading another book, seeing another film -- or talking to another person. I could then contain my life, bottle up the essence of my life into written words. But what kind of life would that be? A writer's life?